ON THE ORIENTATION OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TEMPLES: (4) EPILOGUE IN SERABIT EL KHADIM AND OVERVIEW

摘要

During the last four years, the Egyptian-Spanish Mission on Egyptian Archaeoastronomy, conducted under the auspices of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, has been carrying out an ambitious scientific project with the aim of studying the cosmovision of the ancient civilization of the pharaohs. Part of the project consists of a re-analysis of the iconographic and historical sources that has allowed, among other things, a reassessment of the calendar theory, a challenge to old fashioned paradigms, and a new proposal for the sky-maps of ancient Egypt. However, the most expensive part of the project, in time, effort and resources, has been the five campaigns devoted so far to measuring the orientation and studying the spatial location of ancient monuments across the Nile Valley and beyond. More than 500 pyramids, hypogea, chapels, sanctuaries, and temples small and large have been measured so far. The fieldwork in successive campaigns was organized geographically, but also with the intention of testing previous results. Accordingly, the first campaign was devoted mainly to Upper Egypt, the second to Middle Egypt, the third to the Oases of the Western Desert, and the fourth to Lower Egypt. Three papers on the temples (hereafter Papers 1, 2 and 3) have been published in this journal, in which, stage by stage, we have analysed the relation of the temple orientations to their location within the local landscape, understanding 'landscape' in its broadest meaning of both terrestrial and celestial aspects. Our studies demonstrate that both components were necessary and indeed intimately correlated.